I ride the Metro with my friend Isabel. She's a quiet person, generally--she was shy when we first met, when we were about three years old (and deathly allergic to at least seven different kinds of foods), and she was shy when we met again, ten years later. She's rather opened up in the last couple of weeks. In fact, I just got back from an extended bike ride with Isabel, her brother, Kennedy, and a Spanish girl named Adriana who's staying with them. Yesterday, we went to the thrift store together. The day before that, we went museum hopping (it's wonderful living in a town where the museums are free.) Monday, we hung out at her house.
We generally take the Metro together in the mornings and in the afternoons. We meet at our Metro station at about 8:00, transfer about eight stations later, and finally emerge at our school's stop, about forty-five minutes later. Yesterday was no different, logistically. It was during the commute that the interesting things happened.
Have you ever seen someone you could have sworn was a celebrity? Someone who at least bears a passing (if not almost identical) resemblance to some famous actor or singer? I have, plenty of times. I notice things about people's face shapes, eyebrows, hair-color, bone-structure...anyway. Yesterday, I happened to notice a man-wearing "John Lennon" glasses who just so happened to look like Zach-Galifianakis-from-the-future. I will not bore you with an extensive description--let it suffice to say that he looked like Zach Galifianakis, with grey in his beard (and with John Lennon glasses) and that, when I pointed this out to Isabel (who only knew him from "It's Kind of A Funny Story", a movie I only kind-of sort-of like) she agreed.
"Move, bitch, get out the way"
After we transferred trains (barely making it on the train before "Step back, doors closing") I gave up my seat to a middle-aged African-American man who looked like he probably worked in an upper-level government job. Isabel was standing, anyway. We were standing in the middle of the aisle, right behind him, holding on to the metal pole and to the handhold on the back of his chair.
He took out his iPad and proceeded to turn it on. Isabel pointed out that it was upside-down (the button was, in fact, at the top...? Did he flip it after turning it on? What happened there?) He was reading a book using some e-reader app. I glanced over his shoulder. The first words I read were "strip poker." I doublechecked--sure enough: "Fine then. I dare you to a game of strip poker. Losers buy winners a drink," Alison said playfully.
I dismissed it easily. A lot of books include "sexy" scenes--and a game of strip poker did not necessarily entail anything, well, inappropriate. I didn't think that a respectable man like him, a man to whom I'd forfeited my seat, would whip out his iPad and read a book obviously meant for fappers. If you don't know what that means, look it up on urbandictionary.com. You may or may not be surprised.
But I was wrong. A couple of pages later, I glanced back over his shoulder, curious to see if the book did, in fact, take a turn for the sexy. It did. Just skimming the page, I saw the word dildo used five times, fuck another seven, and lesbian at least twice (not that lesbian is synonymous with sex-driven females.) I scrunched up my face in disgust. How could this man, obviously a professional and obviously a family man, read a pornographic novel, in large print, on a crowded Metro car? I poked Isabel, to see if she noticed, and she let out a little giggle. Thankfully, the man didn't turn around to frown at us, or at all. Jesus, that was frightening.
In the end, it was a weird morning for Metro. We ended up having a good laugh about Zach Galifianakis and Porno Man. Sorry for the slightly-explicit content. It had to be said--I couldn't get the thought of that upside-down iPad out of my mind.
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